1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an operating system and, more particularly, to an operating system capable of supporting system partitions.
2. Description of the Related Art
Hardware vendors are able to customize their hardware systems to operating systems. One customization a hardware vendor can provide is a system partition on a boot-up disk drive of the hardware system. Such a system partition will contain additional programs, such as configuration and diagnostic programs, that a user may access.
The problem is that conventionally, such partitions cannot be accessed by the operating system. In fact, the Microsoft.RTM. Windows NT.TM. operating system (Microsoft Corp., Redmond, Wash.) will not recognize the system partitions and thus a user cannot access the system partition while the Microsoft Windows NT operating system is booted. The only way to access system partitions is for users to reboot the hardware system and press the function key F10 during the boot sequence. Hence, the need to reboot the hardware system to access a system partition is very burdensome to the user. In addition to being time consuming, the user loses the ability to use the operating system.
Thus, there is a need for techniques to allow access to system partitions without having to undergo the reboot sequence.